_BANNERTAIL_
_THE STORY OF A GRAYSQUIRREL_
BANNERTAIL
THE STORY OF A GRAYSQUIRREL
[Illustration]
With 100 Drawings by Ernest Thompson Seton
Author of
Wild Animals I have Known
Trail of the Sandhill Stag
Biography of a Grizzly
Lives of the Hunted
Monarch The Big Bear
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1922
Copyright, 1922, by
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
Printed in the United States of America
_FOREWORD_
_These are the ideas that I have aimed to set forth in this tale._
_1st. That although an animal is much helped by its mother's teaching,
it owes still more to the racial teaching, which is instinct, and can
make a success of life without its mothers guidance, if only it can live
through the dangerous time of infancy and early life._
_2d. Animals often are tempted into immorality--by which I mean, any
habit or practice that would in its final working, tend to destroy the
race. Nature has rigorous ways of dealing with such._
_3d. Animals, like ourselves, must maintain ceaseless war against
insect parasites--or perish._
_4th. In the nut forests of America, practically every tree was planted
by the Graysquirrel, or its kin. No squirrels, no nut-trees._
_These are the motive thoughts behind my woodland novel. I hope I have
presented them convincingly; if not, I hope at least you have been
entertained by the romance._
[Illustration: signature]
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The Foundling 1
II. His Kittenhood 9
III. The Red Horror 15
IV. The New and Lonely Life 19
V. The Fluffing of His Tail 25
VI. The First Nut Crop 31
VII. The Sun Song of Bannertail 39
VIII. The Cold Sleep 49
IX. The Balking of Fire-eyes 57
X. Redsquirrel, the Scold of the Woods 65
XI. Bannertail and the Echo Voice 71
XII. The Courting of Silvergray 77
XIII. The Home in the High Hickory 85
XIV. New Rivals 91
XV. Bachelor Life Again 97
XVI. The Warden Meets an Invader 103
XVII. The Hoodoo on the Home 109
XVIII. The New Home 117
XIX. The Moving of the Young 125
XX. The Coming-out Party 135
XXI. Nursery Days of the Young Ones 141
XXII. Cray Hunts for Trouble 147
XXIII. The Little Squirrels Go to School 151
XXIV. The Lopping of the Wayward Branch 157
XXV. Bannertail Falls into a Snare 163
XXVI. The Addict 173
XXVII. The Dregs of the Cup 181
XXVIII. The Way of Destruction 185
XXIX. Mother Carey's Lash 191
XXX. His Awakening 199
XXXI. The Unwritten Law 205
XXXII. Squirrel Games 213
XXXIII. When Bannertail Was Scarred for Life 221
XXXIV. The Fight with the Black Demon 229
XXXV. The Property Law among Animals 243
XXXVI. Gathering the Great Nut Harvest 251
XXXVII. And To-day 261
ILLUSTRATIONS
Facing Page
His kittenhood 12
Baffling Fire-eyes 60
They twiddled whiskers good night 82
With an angry "Quare!" Silvergray scrambled up again 130
The little squirrels at school 154
Cray sank--a victim to his folly 160
A dangerous game 226
The battle with the Blacksnake 238
_THE FOUNDLING_
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDLING
IT was a rugged old tree standing sturdy and big among the slender
second-growth. The woodmen had spared it because it was too gnarled and
too difficult for them to handle. But the Woodpecker, and a host of
wood-folk that look to the Woodpecker for lodgings, had marked and used
it for many years. Its every cranny and borehole was inhabited by some
quaint elfin of the woods; the biggest hollow of all, just below the
first limb, had done duty for two families of the Flickers who first
made it, and now was the homing hole of a mother Graysquirrel.
[Illustration]
She appeared to have no mate; at least none was seen. No doubt the
outlaw gunners could have told a tale, had they cared to admit that they
went gunning in springtime; and now the widow was doing the best she
could by her family in the big gnarled tree. All went well for a while,
then one day, in haste maybe, she broke an old rule in Squirreldom; she
climbed her nesting tree openly, instead of going up its neighbor, and
then crossing to the den by way of the overhead branches. The farm boy
who saw it, gave a little yelp of savage triumph; his caveman nature
broke out. Clubs and stones were lying near, the whirling end of a stick
picked off the mother Squirrel as she tried to escape with a little one
in her mouth. Had he killed two dangerous enemies the boy could not have
yelled louder. Then up the tree he climbed and found in the nest two
living young ones. With these in his pocket he descended. When on the
ground he found that one was dead, crushed in climbing down. Thus only
one little Squirrel was left alive, only one of the family that he had
seen, the harmless mother and two helpless, harmless little ones dead in
his hands.
[Illustration]
Why? What good did it do him to destroy all this beautiful wild life? He
did not know. He did not think of it at all. He had yielded only to the
wild ancestral instinct to kill, when came a chance to kill, for we must
remember that when that instinct was implanted, wild animals were either
terrible enemies or food that must be got at any price.
The excitement over, the boy looked at the helpless squirming thing in
his hand, and a surge of remorse came on him. He could not feed it; it
must die of hunger. He wished that he knew of some other nest into
which he might put it. He drifted back to the barn. The mew of a young
Kitten caught his ear. He went to the manger. Here was the old Cat with
the one Kitten that had been left her of her brood born two days back.
Remembrance of many Field-mice, Chipmunks and some Squirrels killed by
that old green-eyed huntress, struck a painful note. Yes! No matter what
he did, the old Cat would surely get, kill, and eat the orphan Squirrel.
Then he yielded to a sudden impulse and said: "Here it is, eat it now."
He dropped the little stranger into the nest beside the Kitten. The Cat
turned toward it, smelled it suspiciously once or twice, then licked its
back, picked it up in her mouth, and tucked it under her arm, where half
an hour later the boy found it taking dinner alongside its new-found
foster-brother, while the motherly old Cat leaned back with chin in
air, half-closed eyes and purring the happy, contented purr of mother
pride. Now, indeed, the future of the Foundling was assured.
_HIS KITTENHOOD_